A few times a year you’re gripped by the same fear – everyone who sits around you in the office knows your wardrobe intimately. So intimately that they talk about individual garments as if they were their own.

Comments like, “Remember when we had that meeting? It was a Wednesday, you were wearing that brown shirt”, or, “This is an important client, I think you should wear those dark gray pants”, etc. You feel unimaginative, boring, cheap and out-of-touch. Well, at least you should.

The incorrect thing to do is go home, open up your wardrobe and go postal on every piece of clothing you own. Dragging everything down to a charity bin and starting again, only to fall into the same pit of despair six months later.

The correct thing to do, according to the team at Ask Men, is to inject a handful of fresh pieces every season to compliment your staple collection. 2007, luckily for you, is apparently a great year to do it, and their suggestions – tartan scarves, tweed jackets, the colour gray, to name a few – seem just weird enough to make sense.

No one will notice you’re wearing the same shirt as last Tuesday if you’re wearing a gaudy new scarf. It’s a stroke of fashion genius.

2007 Work Wear [Ask Men]